Don't Wait, Book Your Propaganda Tour to Cuba!
Oh, bless your pink little hearts, New York Times travel section. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't know that I can now go on a perfectly legal propaganda tour of Cuba.
Thanks to policy changes by President Obama earlier this year designed to encourage more contact between Americans and citizens of the Communist-ruled island, the Treasury Department is once again granting so-called “people-to-people” licenses, which greatly expand travel opportunities for Cuba-bound visitors.
You can't just go, mind you, of course not. You could end up with all kinds of wrong ideas. You have to go with a licensed operator:
The trips aren’t your typical Caribbean vacation. Rather, the focus is on meeting local citizens and learning about the culture, not beach hopping and mojito-swilling. Days are filled with busy itineraries that may include visiting orphanages or speaking with musicians or community leaders. Guidelines published by the Treasury Department say the tours must “have a full-time schedule of educational exchange activities that will result in meaningful interaction between the travelers and individuals in Cuba.”
I'll say this isn't your typical Caribbean vacation. That would be because Cuba's not your typical Caribbean country now, is it?
Meanwhile, in an exercise that's always good for a very grim laugh, let's do a little reading-between-the-lines at one of my favorite newspapers, the Havana Times.
I was shocked by one bit of information that they announced in the day’s headlines. When hearing it, the first thing that came to mind was that it didn’t fit in with the times we’re experiencing, especially since government officials have been calling for the elimination of all free goods and services.
Notwithstanding, the news featured a story about how employees at the Juan Marinello Printing Company in eastern Cuba were working three shifts a day in an extraordinary effort to print 169,000 copies of the book The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara. The objective was to make the work available — for free — to students at different grade levels who would soon be graduating.
Questions immediately came to my mind.
I thought about all the resources invested by the Cuban government to make possible the presentation of this free item. What also came to mind were the opening and closing speeches by President Raul Castro before the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party. In his remarks we were constantly being urged to use of resources rationally and with planning, especially in areas marked by constant price increases in the international market. He also related this to the international financial crisis, one that Cuba, of course, has been unable to escape.
Nevertheless, I continued thinking about the irrationality of this effort. I figured that with these 169,000 copies, 169 different and important books could be printed in editions of 1,000 copies each, which could then be sold to the public – not given away for free.
I'm guessing, having myself once worked on a Communist-Party-progaganda mouthpiece, that this is one of those situations in which you can get away with saying quite a few interesting things so long as you add the line about preserving the spirit of the Revolution. (I did, at least, until they kicked me out.) Note, for example, this impassioned appeal to preserve the spirit of the Revolution:
"They’ll give you more years in jail for killing a cow than what they gave those people who murdered dozens of psychiatric patients,” one of my neighbors commented.
In any case, it’s healthy that corrupt doctors are being tried, as are government ministers who became rich speculating with people’s food and those who have milked public corporations like Cubana de Aviacion.
An acquaintance who clandestinely sells ice cream told me that the police came to his house asking for the names of those who sell that product to him. “We’re not interested in you, but the ones who steal whole truckloads from the factory,” the officers explained to him.
Anyway, Janet Moore, of authorized travel service provider Distant Horizons, assures us that our trips will be pleasant: “They have all the facilities you’d expect: swimming pools, little gyms. And there are a lot of very good private restaurants.”
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Comments :
Mar '11
Re: Don't Wait, Book Your Propaganda Tour to Cuba!
...where you will not come in contact with any Cubans, other than those authorized by the authorities. Excellent "people-to-people" contacts!
Oct '10
Re: Don't Wait, Book Your Propaganda Tour to Cuba!
I recently had some pleasant interaction with a young Cuban. I bought a car from him in Miami. He was anything but authorized, however, not being a fan of either the present administration in this country or the one he fled at age 13 with his family. His English was good, but he said he was working hard to eliminate his accent, which he thought might hinder him in business. His admiration for Marco Rubio wouldn't endear him with the NYT's travel writer either, but he showed perhaps better political judgement than me when he disagreed that Rubio should run on the bottom of the ticket. Too soon, he said. Let him gain experience. Where did a twenty-something emigrant get that kind of wisdom and patience?
Oct '10
Re: Don't Wait, Book Your Propaganda Tour to Cuba!
After I'm done worshipping the porcelain god over this, I'll watch Andy Garcia's The Lost City again. Especially the cast commentary. God bless the Cubans in exile.
Re: Don't Wait, Book Your Propaganda Tour to Cuba!
Some time ago, in the mid-70s I believe, Fidel Castro invited a group of Mexican nationals to come tour Cuba to see how great it was. My grandfather, a ranch owner in central Mexico, went to Cuba and didn't abide by the rules the government imposed upon the tourists, chief among those -- don't talk to the locals. My grandfather sought out ranchers and asked them how ranching in Cuba was, how life really was. He reported that most of the locals he tried to speak to turned ghostly white, then turned around and walked in the opposite direction. One rancher, before walking away, yelled, "Just by asking me this, you are going to get me punished!"
My grandfather, whom I assume held a fairly neutral position on the regime before his trip, became a fierce critic of Castro and communism from that day forward.
May '10
Re: Don't Wait, Book Your Propaganda Tour to Cuba!
Anyone who considers throwing a few dollars at Fidel's empire should check out
http://therealcuba.com/ I especially like the section on "Free health Care".
May '11
Re: Don't Wait, Book Your Propaganda Tour to Cuba!
I spent two weeks in Cuba on an educational junket in 2004 and can tell you that you will meet many interesting people. You will be greeted by very attractive teenaged prostitutes along every block of every city. The only access to all but the most basic necessities of life is only available through access to American dollars. No cosmetics, no elctronics, hardly anything but rice, beans and one chicken per month. If you have a garden, half of the produce is collected by the government. There is no fishing industry because there are no boats. They have the highest literacy rate in all the world but no one is computer literate because there are no computers. Every liberal democrat (pardon the redundancy) needs to visit Cuba.